


The Material of Dreams

by The_Last_Kenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Across The Stars, Canon-Compliant, F/M, Gen, Sad, There is no way Padmé Amidala did not have plans, Tragedy, a study of names, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25544524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: The names Padmé Amidala gives her children are not the ones she had been dreaming of.(Padmé was strong enough to bring her son and daughter safely into the world before she lost her life. She was also strong enough to give them names that had not been dreamed up in the bed she had shared with Anakin Skywalker.)
Relationships: Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 101





	The Material of Dreams

_The names Padmé Amidala gives her children are not the ones she had been dreaming of._

Ever since she knew, ever since she’d felt the first gentle swell of her stomach and started running a hundred different ways to keep this secret—to keep their family safe—she had been dreaming up names.

Anakin was content to let his wife do the naming.

For one thing, they bickered, lightheartedly, over the unknown gender for months. He felt that the child would have their name a few weeks after being born.

It was a tradition on Tatooine, he said. His face shuttered when he said that, but they both knew that he had found one of the few—perhaps the _only_ —tradition from his childhood that he wanted to keep. Shmi Skywalker had named her miracle child Anakin when he was almost two months old, the sun already beginning to bronze his soft skin despite the shelter of his mother’s arms. _Anakin_ , derived from a very old slave’s tongue, _Anakin_ meaning one with the suns, or perhaps family of the stars. _Anakin Skywalker_ , born to be free.

For another, the names of the Naboo were matrilineal. Mothers named their daughters for their revered ancestors, their sons for the things they saw strength in. _Padmé_ was named for a great-great-grandmother who trained a group of elite female star-pilots to help defend the Chommel Sector from invasion. Her sister _Sola_ was named for a distant aunt who helped ensure the sanctity of motherhood when labor laws had prevented them from caring for their newborns. They had no brothers, but if they had, their mother _Jobal_ (named for a not-so-distant grandmother who defended her daughter from a traitorous husband) would have named him _Kanee_ , meaning the storms of the heavens seen from above.

And finally, Anakin liked to watch his wife daydream. She would lie in their bed on the rare nights they had together and smile even as she drifted to sleep, thinking of names that meant sunlight on the waters, that meant the warrior who comes home with a smile, of her ancient matriarch who helped Naboo join the Republic in centuries gone by, of another grandmother who showed a softer strength when she lost two successive husbands to famine and worked herself to the bone to provide for her children and every wanting child she ever met.

Padmé dreamed of names.

She tried not to dream of faces. She wanted to watch them grow, to be surprised by each new feature as time revealed it. Watching the typical sweet roundness of an infant evolve into the unique face of a child—later, an adult—was something she wanted to wait to see.

Anakin was different. He pictured, every day, a little girl just like Padmé—although, he would tease, perhaps taller, like her father.

Padmé laughed. She ran a hand over her growing curve and chuckled, leaning into his strong embrace, utterly happy even as the war and the world seemed to break apart around her. They were family; all would be well.

And then…

Obi-Wan was a dear friend. Perhaps her dearest friend, after war had claimed so many lives and divided her from old companions. He loved her in the way she thought a brother might—respectful, teasing, easily exchanging sympathetic glances and flashes of shared humor, watching out for her. She knew that Obi-Wan knew her secret—their secret—and never once did she doubt that he would guard it with his life.

And he came and told her terrible things.

That the man she loved most of all had committed crimes beyond comprehension, that he was dangerous, that he was selfish.

(Had she not realized already in the quiet of her heart that the man she trusted most and the man she loved most were not the same person, the realization would have broken her on the spot. But she already knew. Had perhaps always known.)

She ran to Anakin with open arms, surrounded by fire and smoke and the scent of lava and fear on the air; she ran to him unprotected, to him who had always offered her shelter, since Geonosis when their hands were tied and all he could give was a vow and a kiss—maybe even earlier, when a frightened boy leaving his world behind handed her a necklace and his confidence in her without batting an eye, she a frightened child on the throne of a queen.

And he had turned their dreams to ashes.

He had betrayed the Republic, turned on the Jedi, abandoned his principles, he had embraced violence and death and he could not seem to hear her or see her as she really was, only accepting words that fueled his own selfish justification.

He did not deny the murders.

He had murdered children. Jedi younglings. He had _murdered children_ , and as an invisible gauntlet closed around her exposed throat, she realized he would kill their child too.

Everything after that was a blur of pain and fear.

Everything after that was all too brief.

She screamed as the ship hurtled through space and Obi-Wan held her hand and stroked her hair as if it came naturally to him, and his face was shattered in a hundred different ways without a mark on him, and she tried to stay awake because he asked, and because her body was warning her that she must.

Still she slipped in and out.

She screamed as she worked every muscle in her body to bear her children—twins, she was carrying twins, two suns, and how had she not known, how had Anakin not known?

They came into the world and she cried more tears because even before water flooded her eyes her vision began to fade and it was hard to see them, her babies, her son, her daughter.

One of each. Husband and wife had both been right.

(They had both been wrong.)

She would never get to raise them. She was barely able to touch them, much less hold them, and she felt it as the life fled her body. It felt wrong, unnatural, and some part of her wondered if Anakin were standing somewhere not far away, his hand held out and his eyes on fire, once again choking the life from her.

“Luke,” she whispered. “Oh, Luke.”

“Leia,” she gasped.

Padmé had no prescience, no connection to the Force, not like her husband had, not like Obi-Wan Kenobi did. But as her eyes darkened she saw a man with the sweetest eyes and his father’s sun-bleached locks, and a woman with the most radiant smile and long dark hair like her mother’s, and she felt something inside her ease a little. A parting gift for the mother who could not stay.

And her gifts to them:

She fought to live long enough to give them life.

She refused to speak a last name for them, giving them over to Obi-Wan’s care, trusting his goodness in the way she had never quite trusted Anakin’s.

And their names. Luke. Leia. Bound together by blood and birth and a lilt of the tongue; the names were not of Naboo or of Tatooine.

 _Luke_ , from the ancient annals of Core World history, a forgotten planet that legend said all humanity sprung from.

 _Leia_ , a durable stone from the depths of Coruscant before it was all mined away, a dark bolt of cobalt-blue that sparkled with infinite stars when polished.

Words she had come across in her studies, in her fascination with justice and truth and combining the best of the old with the best of the new. The planet of life, of birth, of destiny and new beginnings; the stone upon which a civilization had been built, a stone that glittered in a thousand ways.

She did not get to see their faces change.

She did not get to train them, to teach them, to shelter them.

She did not have a husband to stand by her side and guide them.

Everything was wrong.

But they were not the names she had dreamed of—but they were the right ones. They were hope and protection and destiny and a blessing on their as-yet unformed characters.

Padmé Amidala gave up everything to give her children life.

She gave them the names of dreamers long gone by, and as her heartbeat faltered she did not know that one day those names would be famous, would be treasured, would send hope and joy and rebellion to the far reaches of the most distant stars. With her fading breath, she named them legends.

(And with her last one, she spoke of a glimmer of hope that would one day be passed from an old man named _Ben_ to a boy named _Luke_ to a girl named _Leia_.)

(They were family. All would be well.)

**Author's Note:**

> Now, I totally invented the cultural naming traditions from Naboo and Tatooine. They are based on actual traditions, though, and I felt they illustrated something very important for this story concept. Hope you enjoyed the read!


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